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Dessert

Boiled Puddings

A sweet pudding made with milk, sugar, bread crumbs, eggs, butter, brandy, and optional currants and candied orange peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Mix

  1. In a bowl, combine milk, sugar, salt, bread crumbs, and eggs. Add nutmeg or grated lemon rind to taste.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix in butter and brandy.

  3. Combine both mixtures and stir well. If desired, fold in currants and candied orange peel.

Boil

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth or mold.

  2. Boil for 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable pudding when boiled.
Bread crumbs
Provide the body and absorb the liquid so the pudding holds its shape.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that moistens the crumbs and eggs into a custard-like batter.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the eggs and butter.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth or mold. The mixture must be sealed and packed so water cannot enter during boiling, and it should leave room to expand, otherwise the pudding can turn watery or burst.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, bread, egg, nutmeg, butter, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, bread, egg, nutmeg, butter, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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